March 13, 2013

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Top Bar Hives, Warre Hives and Cedar Bee Hives

Our hives are built in Portland, Oregon from Western Red Cedar. In addition to beekeeping supplies, we also provide bee swarm removal, beekeeping classes, and hive consultations.

We've used the same cedar top bar hives and Warre hives we sell in our own apiary since 2008. Based on our testing and customer feedback, we've continued to refine the hives we build. We're proud to offer what we believe are the most innovative, well-made hives in the world.

When you buy hives and other beekeeping equipment from us, know that we're always available by phone, e-mail, or in person at our retail store to assist you. We keep bees ourselves and understand how to use each type of hive we sell. We want you to succeed as a beekeeper!

Top Bar Hive

Top bar hives are a great option for those looking for a simple hive to open and manage, without heavy boxes or a lot of extra equipment required. Bees build their own combs and tend to be more docile than those in vertical hives with stacked boxes. Our cedar top-bar hives feature a full-length viewing window for simple monitoring. We also offer step-by-step plans for you to build your own hive.

Warre Hive

Warre hives are perfect for those looking for a hands-off beehive that lets the bees build their own natural, foundationless combs. Bees in the wild build from the top of the cavity downward, and in these hives they do just that. While there are still boxes to lift, they are much lighter than Langstroth boxes. Our cedar Warre hives come with optional viewing windows in each box.

Langstroth Hive

Langstroth hives are the most common hives in use throughout North America. Ours are made from the finest kiln dried Western Red Cedar. They work interchangeably with other Langstroth boxes and frames, but last much longer and weigh less.

Daylight Savings Time has come, which tells us that Bee Season is almost here. What a year it's been! In April of 2012 we moved Bee Thinking from its tiny, 1,000 square foot space in the Sellwood Neighborhood of Portland to a 3,000 square foot facility in the SE Hawthorne Neighborhood.

Inside Bee Thinking

In May of last year Williams-Sonoma approached us about selling our hives (top bar hives and Warre hives) through their website and catalog. This, of course, was flattering and exciting news! In order to keep up with the demand and further refine the quality of our products, we built a relationship with a new manufacturer. We're now able to produce at least 300 hives at a time, all consistently quality controlled and ready to ship to our customers worldwide.

Due to the increased demand for our hives, we've also increased our staff from 2 to 4, with Alyssa starting as our full-time manager in July. This staffing increase has better enabled us to handle the deluge of orders, phone calls and e-mails that come with the spring rush. We're doing our best to keep up, usually shipping orders within a day or two, but sometimes we get backed up. Please bear with us!

We're teaching at least 2 beekeeping classes per month (sign up for beekeeping classes), with most of them filling up long before the date of the class (Sign up soon if you plan to take one this spring)! We also had a Mead Making class earlier this year that was a great success. We plan to continue mead making classes and begin offering other bee-related classes in the near future.

We're continuing to innovate by improving current products offering new ones based on requests from our customers. Our top bar hive now features a full-length window, a modification that has been requested for a long time. Our new products that will be available soon include top bar hive screened bottoms, Western Red Cedar Langstroth hives (available for pre-order), and top bar hive nucleus boxes.

Cedar Langstroth Hive Body

Swarms should begin around the start of April. In fact, in 2011 and 2012 our first swarms of the year were on Easter day. We're working hard to prepare for swarm season, and we're planning on adding dozens of bait hives all over the city to ensure we capture as many swarms as possible, while also keeping them from moving into walls.